No it couldn’t. Besides the controls surfaces being at the wrong end of the flying surfaces, you would have major balance issues. The plane would not be stable. And while it may get (briefly) airborne, it would be uncontrollable.
Even if the plane is travelling backwards relative to the ground, it is still flying forwards through the air. And ‘through the air’ is all the airplane cares about.
I’ve got most of my flight time in a Taylorcraft. This plane has a stall speed of 38mph. I’ve been flying when the wind speed on the ground was 25 mph, but 2000’ up it was closer to 50 MPH. In those situations, I’ve flown the plane backwards. 10MPH relative to the ground at 2000’ is nearly imperceivable, but the cool part was watching the hand held GPS I had mounted to the dash suddenly indicate I was going the wrong way.
In practice, the wind would be gusting or swirling around buildings, there’d be nobody at the controls to steer it and that would make it a little tail heavy. The wind would lift one wing more than the other and the plane would tumble and be carried along with the wind for a bit.
Go to a general aviation airport someday. You should see the small planes mostly tied down, like this.
Another small airplane pilot chiming in - I’ve flown a Cessna 150 backwards more than once, all you need is a steady headwind greater than 48 mph.
If headwind < airspeed then groundspeed is a positive number and you are going somewhere.
If headwind = airspeed then groundspeed is 0 and you aren’t going anywhere.
If headwind > airspeed then groundspeed is a negative number and you’re going back to where you’ve already been.
Except on landing and take-off the ground is irrelevant to the airplane (although it might matter to humans on board). It’s the air going over the wing that matters.
For anybody still confused, I think the water analogy is a good one. Imagine paddling a kayak in a stream. If you can paddle 10mph and the stream is moving at 5mph, you can paddle up stream at 5mph relative to the shore, 10mph in relation to the moving water. You can paddle downstream at 15mph in relation to the shore, 10mph in relation to the water.
If the speed of the stream increases to 15mph and you paddle upstream, you will be moving backward 5mph in relation to the shore, 10mph forward in relation to the moving water. You are always moving forward in relation to the water, it is your speed in relation to the shore which changes.
The chief flight instructor at our airport told me that he has gotten calls from concerned neighbors of the airport about planes “hovering” over their houses when students in our practice area were practicing slow flight into a strong headwind. From the ground, it looks like the planes aren’t moving much at all (or, in fact, moving backward). As long it has plenty of wind passing over the wings, the plane doesn’t care what its ground speed is.
I can remember when I was a kid seeing small planes flying backwards very slowly. For a long time, I believed that all planes could fly backwards. :smack:
Realizing that air speed is independent of ground speed is, IMHO, a logical leap. It would be different if we all could fly, or if we all flew in planes and were rafting on the river every day. But we don’t. That’d be like me asking if it was really hard for you to understand the game of rugby (just assuming you’re not a fan, feel free to chose another example). It’s intuitive to me, but I’ve been playing for years.
This is the opposite of the OP. If the tailwind went suddenly from 0 to 100mph, the plane would still move moving with a groundspeed of 100mph, but with zero airspeed, it would have no lift and start falling. However, there would also be no drag, so the engines would start accelerating the plane through the air (increasing groundspeed from 0 to a positive number), getting more lift as the airspeed increased.
If the passengers were lucky, before it hit the ground the plane would be moving forward through the air fast enough to generate enough lift to keep it up. As the plane reached +100 mph airspeed (+200 groundspeed), drag would balance out the engines and it would be back to steady state.
In addition, the falling itself increases your airspeed. By lowering the nose, the falling quickly accelerates the plane to the speed required for level flight.
“Loseth not thy airspeed, lest the ground riseth up and smite thee.”
That’s fairly good, but I’m guessing you’re not a pilot, Quercus.
Airplanes are designed so that when there is zero airspeed the nose starts heading downwards first. As gravity accelerates the airplane the passage through the air generates airspeed and lift. Assuming there is enough air under you before you hit the ground you will be able to resume flying without much issue. Such a condition where there is insufficient airspeed to maintain flight is called a “stall” and pilots start training in how to deal with this situation very early in flight training (in my case, about the second or third hour of sticktime). In fact, many pilots consider this exercise fun (when done with due regard for safety).
I realize this is similar to what you stated, but you are assuming engine power is required to generate airspeed. It’s not. Gravity is quite sufficient to generate airspeed - that’s how gliders work, in fact. Even without engine power it is possible for an airplane to recover from a stall and land in a safe, controlled manner although certain conditions must be met and those conditions will vary by airplane. For example, while doing that in a Cessna 172 that loses engine power and stalls at a 10,000 foot altitude is quite reasonable, I would not wish to attempt such a thing in a Boeing 747 which will require MUCH more altitude to accomplish such a maneuver.
The most important thing mentioned so far in this thread is likely to be the “airspeed vs groundspeed” thing. If you can get your head around that, you’re halfway there.
It remains stationary relative to the ground, as far as I can tell.
Although it wouldn’t hurt if one of our helicopter pilots confirmed that, as there are slightly different aerodynamic realities for rotorcraft vs. fixed wing.
